Now & Then

Celebrating 10 whole years of Coffee + Crumbs!

Note: Ashlee will have plenty of mushy words to share in our July newsletter (hits inboxes this Saturday ✨), but we couldn’t let this day go by without a small acknowledgement that July 1, 2024 marks a full decade of Coffee + Crumbs (!!!).

Whether you’ve been here for ten years, ten months, ten weeks, or ten minutes—we hope you enjoy this little trip down memory lane from a few members of the original crew. ❤️

Then, Summer 2014 | Ashlee

Monday through Friday, my husband commutes to work, leaving us for 10-11 hours a day. Six months pregnant with baby #2, I spend my days at home with Everett—our firstborn—rotating time between a plastic backyard water table, watching Elmo on the TV, and pulling tiny magnetic trains around a wooden track from IKEA. I’m lonely, but haven’t told anyone. I love being pregnant, but I worry there won’t be enough of me to go around once the baby’s here. How will I possibly love another child as much as I love Everett? The question itself feels like a sin. I wonder if any other mother has ever felt this way.

Everett takes an afternoon nap each day, a singular event on our daily schedule that I look forward to with the anticipation of a tropical vacation. (Another admission that feels like a sin: do other moms love nap time as much as I do?). Once he’s settled in his crib, nestled against a tattered blue blanket with the sound machine whirring, I curl up on the couch with my laptop and a bag of Cheetos. I write and write and write, emptying myself onto a blank page. And then I open a new tab to squarespace.com, where I hunker down with my secret passion project: a storytelling website for moms that I hope to launch soon. I dream and dream and dream, tinkering and designing and experimenting, until he wakes up.

2014

Now, Summer 2024 | Ashlee

That baby in my belly, Carson, is now nine years old. He rides his bike to school, makes his own breakfast, and is currently binge-reading a book series about dragons. Everett is in middle school. Middle school! He does his own laundry, shoots three-pointers like his dad and has a debit card. And then there’s Presley, who was nothing more than a hope and a prayer when all of this started. She’s five and full of life: vivacious, curious, prefers twirling to walking.

Life is far from perfect, but we are undeniably in the sweet spot. The days are loud and none of these kids nap anymore, but I still find my way to the blank page each day. Sometimes I write from my desk early in the morning. Sometimes I write on the living room carpet in the afternoon while Presley sits on my back and plays with my hair. Days like today, I sit in the backyard and write from the patio while the boys play basketball and Presley dances on the trampoline. I let my heart bleed out on paper, for the millionth time—one part therapy, one part gratitude. Much of my stories inspired, still, by the same pulsing thought: I wonder if any other mother has ever felt this way.

2024

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Then, Summer 2014 | Callie

Summer 2014, and I just completed my coursework for my MFA in Creative Writing. Hadley is starting 2nd grade, Harper is starting Kindergarten, and I am going back to teaching middle school after an eight year break. I will drop my girls off at school, write until lunch time, and then go teach in the afternoons. It will be a dream of a situation where motherhood, writing, and teaching all feed off of and nourish each other. 

But I do not know this yet. Right now, I have ten minutes to get the girls to a dentist appointment, but Harper, who has on a pair of fairy wings and is jumping off the stairs in an attempt to fly, is crying because she can’t, in fact, fly. “These wings don’t work!” she screams. “I’ll never be a fairy!”

What to do in these situations? Kneel down next to my five-year-old and say, “You’re right, Harper. You’ll never be a fairy because fairies aren’t real.” I don’t have the heart —or the time—for that kind of talk, so I check my email instead. My favorite blogger, Elise Blaha Cripe, has a post about a new website called “Coffee + Crumbs,” and links to an essay of hers. I click over to read it.

The essay is about pancakes, and of course it’s not really about pancakes. It’s about motherhood and postpartum, and marriage and friendship, and it’s all mixed together in something tangible and tasty. And bearable.

“I can do that,” I say, holding out a hand for Harper and telling her to jump because I’ll help her fly. “This is what I do.”

2014

Now, Summer 2024 | Callie

This morning I made pancakes for the first time in my life. I am 48 years old. 

I’ve been up since 5 a.m. trying to write, but I was distracted. I was hesitant. I was worried. I was overwhelmed. Worse, I feel guilty for wasting time when I had the house to myself. There’s so much to write. There’s so much I want to write. But—call it perimenapause, call it menopause, call it I have two teenage, independent, extremely busy girls, call it I am exhausted from years of trying to cobble together a writing career while fitting myself into jobs I don’t fit into—I don’t have the focus that I used to.

Hadley and Harper will be starving when they wake up, and there is not a whole lot to eat since it’s the end of the week. But we have a Costco-sized box of pancake mix, milk, and eggs, so I lift the cast iron skillet from a cupboard and place it on our stove. Butter soon sizzles, and I stir in a teaspoon of vanilla and cinnamon into the batter before I pour it into the skillet. Flip ‘em when the batter starts to bubble. More butter. A pat for each pancake. My kitchen is smokey with sugar and butter and vanilla swirling together.

They’re not pretty, these pancakes. Neither is the kitchen. Neither am I. We all look like we’ve been in battle. Lately, this is how I feel after I’ve interacted with anything or anyone. 

I’m not sure the pancakes are edible either, so just in case, I bake a batch of blueberry cornbread muffins. I sprinkle sugar on the batter before I place them in the oven. While they bake, I clean the skillet and the kitchen. 

I’m being ridiculous. I know this. I’m avoiding writing because I’m afraid. I’m baking because I want the instant gratification of having something to show for my days. See? I’m working hard. See? I am capable. See? I love you.

I pile the pancakes on a plate and place them next to the muffins and a note to Hadley and Harper, warning them that I’m not sure the pancakes are any good, so here are muffins, too. I go upstairs to take a shower, and when I come back downstairs, the pancakes are gone, and so are two of the muffins.

I take a muffin from the tin on my way out the door. I am meeting four other writers in my neighborhood for a writing session. I’ve never written with people before. The thought freaks me out a little bit. 

But I made pancakes, and my girls loved them, and in this moment I’m feeling like I can do just about anything—like help Hadley as she navigates applying to college. Like, sit next to Harper (and not clench) as she learns to drive. Like, grow old. Like, write.

2024

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Then, Summer 2014 | Melanie

It’s 2014 and with the finalization of our oldest and newest child’s adoption, we’ve officially become a family of five. Ana is almost ten, Elliott is seven, Evie is five, and I have three kids from three different continents in three different schools. We’re at the tip of the special needs iceberg, and we’re beginning to discover that some of our people face challenges that will alter the trajectory of all our lives. I’m in the middle of rewrites on my first of a two-book deal with HarperCollins Zondervan and my minivan is about to be totaled with me in it in three, two, one…

2014

Now, Summer 2024 | Melanie

OOF. Oh hey, 2024, that last decade hit like a fist. I have an adult out of the house, an almost adult, and even my baby’s in high school. They’re living their lives, and I don’t write much about them anymore. Breast cancer really whacked me in the ladynuts and after four surgeries, chemo, radiation, and life-altering hormone therapy, I decided to get my registered yoga teacher certification and teach. I also got a job at my local indie bookstore because my kids don’t need me to drive them anywhere so I suddenly have time. As my kids grew into teenagers, I shifted from writing about them to writing about fictional teenagers, and now I’m a screenwriter for the TV show Creepshow and working on rewrites for my first novel for young teens.

2024

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Then, Summer 2014 | Katie

All day, every day, I’m nursing a six-week-old baby and keeping an already-sassy eighteen-month-old off of furniture and cupboards. Most of the time I feel like I’m okay managing the balance of two kids under two years old. But then sometimes, the cry of a newborn and the newly developing resistance of a toddler erupt at the same time, and it is so chaotic and overwhelming I might collapse in a ball of anxiety. I finished a Bible study about parenting recently, just before Cannon was born, and the teacher had said something in passing about how when the days are really long and stressful and feel completely unproductive, just think of the kids, think of their perspective. Because after all, it is their day, too. And somehow, reminding myself of a bigger picture always brings me a deep exhale. I do my best to write the tension out into the page, to make it smaller by conquering it with words. But mostly, the words that I force out feel insufficient, trite, too tied up in a bow to reflect how untidy life feels. I can only figure that God is not done showing me something about him, and about me, and about how to keep going when life already feels so full. 

2014

Now, Summer 2024 | Katie

We’ve all heard that phrase, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” Sorry for the cliche but that may be the most accurate summation of the last decade of my life. Two babies quickly became three. My son was diagnosed with autism right after his second birthday. Three years later we took in an emergency foster placement and got a positive pregnancy test within two weeks of each other. A vasectomy didn’t work. An IRA was cashed out to afford a 12-passenger van for the half dozen children we have, and now I drive around with the swagger of Doja Cat singing, “She got her own car, she don’t need no lift”, except the opposite, for 12-passenger vans are, generally, very ugly. Addiction clawed its way into my marriage and after five years of fighting, we lost to that wretched thing. Life has changed so much, I hardly recognize my reality as my own. But I still write it all down, because somehow, the sentences naming what is hard help me move through what is hard. Not around it with platitudes. There are no bows anymore, not really. And I’m finally comfortable with that. Because I used to be a writer who wrote about what I know, and then God spent a decade teaching me all I really know is He’s good, and He’s near, and He won. Somehow, that’s enough.  

2024

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To celebrate a decade of our work, we’re offering 30% off annual subscriptions this entire month (new subscribers only!). If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading your subscription, this is the last sale we’re running in 2024. Don’t miss out 😜

Yes, you get cool perks like bonus essays + bonus podcasts and exclusive access to our Dear Mothers column, but even better than that—you equip a whole team of mother artists to continue putting good stories into the world. Thank you for supporting women and the arts. We are still here, ten years later, because of you.